Spring 2019, Wild Readers 5 discussion

After doing plenty of research, I decided do my review on the nonfiction novel, The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown. At the beginning of the book Brown starts off with a story about two boys who decide to tag a wall and end up getting arrested and beat by the cops. The story then goes viral as people demand justice. This was in Dara’a of southern Syria. This was just one of the many crazy and unfair stories that exist in Syria. The residents of Syria are upset and unhappy with living there due to their corrupt government. The government retaliates against the protesters, with the growth of the protest and violence leading to civil war. Syrians flee to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, living in tent cities, with friends and family, or in communities in the hills. Violence intensifies when jihadists, including ISIS, join the fight. Brown followers various refugees’ journeys as they escape any way they can. People were fleeing on foot, on boats, with smugglers, some of them successfully escaping, but many were dying in the process. Brown also gives us a closer look at life from both inside and outside of refugee camps. He shares statistics that help inform the stories he is telling, such as numbers of registered refugees, applications for asylum, and numbers of the dead and missing. Although this novel is based on many tragedies that these people have faced, I am grateful to be educated in back stories that I was not aware of before.